Once again, this series takes familiar romance tropes, creates three dimensional characters with depth and charm, then adds smoking hot kink that absolutely knocks my socks off. BEAUTIFUL STRANGER is an unequivocal recommendation, and once again I'm left anxious for anything more by this fantastic writing duo.

Love, love, love it. The art is back, the dialog is snappy, and this ending has me on the hook for more. Fingers crossed that Buffy, Angel & Faith, and Willow will be easy to follow from issue to issue. On to Angel & Faith!

Hahahaha, so much shipping and fan angst is wrapped up in this book, with a most satisfying bang. Could not stop laughing, love the super hero sex. I've gotten ahead of myself on Angel canon, however, this means I'll have to stop reading here and go back to catch up on Angel and Spike. Can't wait!

Re-read #1 (10/13): I wandered away from the comics for a bit, so I reread this one to get me back in the groove. So hilarious and awesome, all over again.

Though not groundbreaking, this book took reminded me of excellent elements of my favorite series. Less grim than Poison Study, more magical than The Hunger Games, I'm filing this under "girl kicking butt".

While Solo and his brothers-in-arms had me on the hook from the get go, his heroine was a bit too relentlessly Mary Sue for me to enjoy. While I was onboard initially, having so much of the book's drama and development focus on how misunderstood this perfect woman is was rather boring. An old school love story dressed up with modern Alphas, this book was well written but not what I was looking for.

As charming and quirky as Gail Carriger's Soulless series, CURTSIES & CONSPIRACIES delves back into all the ways that society, science, and magic can collide. As interesting for the social dynamics as for the dirigibles and mechanimals, Sophronia's perspective on manners and intelligence gathering is a fantastic window into this world.

From the outside, placing a spy training facility inside a Victorian finishing school would seem like an odd juxtaposition, but even new readers will quickly orient themselves to this mix of familiar historical setting and completely original worldbuilding. Sophronoia not only reads as a young adult, but her youth is a key element of what makes her compelling as a heroine. The choices that face her are relateable, from budding love to jealous rivals, and each one of these challenges foreshadows larger life challenges she will face. As a lady intelligencer, Sophronia is learning how to blend with society, but will she also internalize those limitations and boundaries?

While the intricacies of the mystery in CURTSIES & CONSPIRACIES kept me glued to the page, it will be that larger question of Sophronia's fate that will keep me coming back for more. Witty, charming, and brimming with potential, I can wait to see the woman Sophronia is growing into.

RAGS & BONES is a gorgeously currated collection of short stories, as satisfying for the glimpses of each story's origin story as the final product. As favorite authors distill classic tales to their essence, this his anthology was immersive and thought provoking, a masters class in the creative process with an all star attendance list.

Many of the inspirations for these stories were unfamiliar, but that proved as intriguing as the stories themselves. Each author included a short note, offering a connection to the source material through their eyes. Updating classic sources with a new perpective and a fresh voice, I found myself enjoying the narrative, often contemplating the moral complexities faced by characters, and then mentally retracing how the author's original experience with a story gave birth to a new perspective.

RAGS & BONES could serve as a self contained book club, offering both the pleasure of well written stories and the connective sinew of the author's own experiences. With the gorgeous illustrations and thought provoking, clever stories, you'll want to share most of the readers in your life to continue the conversation.

I've jumped back into this series to prep for a POSSESSION ARC review (of course, it won't be advanced by the time I get caught up). I enjoy the present tense action, but the demon and archangel seem needlessly silly. Still, this series captures some of my favorite aspects of the Black Dagger Brotherhood (alpha men, romance, violence) without some of my less favorite items (exaggerated street cant, designer obsessiveness, and endless bad guy POVs and politics). Of course, I guess Devina's silly POVs count as a downpoint for this series as well... we'll see if she gets to the point of feeling interminable.

And... done. Nigel is officially my least favorite part of the series, Devina's POVs and dynamic with the angels add some unexpected twists. This book really surprised me, very cool.

I'm about 25% done, and I'm really struggling with this book. I like John and Solo and Blue, I'm invested in their fates, but I don't have much interest in the romance. Blue and Evie have all sorts of misconceptions about each other, but still manage to rub their crotches together on frequent intervals, and I'm not at all curious about what arbitrary chain of events is going to lead Evie to rethink Blue or lead Blue to understand Evie's pain. Furthermore, the "otherworlders" powers seem completely... random. Blue, as the heir to family's powers, which makes it seem like Q designed him in a MI5 basement somewhere. He can sense emotions and shoot out a beam that paralyzes people and burn away impurities and regenerate his skin and... ok, fine. Whatever happens, Blue will handle it. So I don't really need to worry about that, clearly.

in the end, the only thing I'm interested in is John's fate (as book one took care of Solo), and that's not enough to keep me flipping pages.